Press Releases

WASHINGTON, DC — This morning, Wisconsin’s First District congressman and speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, spoke with WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes.

Excerpts of Ryan’s remarks follow:

Anticipating the State of the Union Address: “I think there will be a lot of straw men. I think there will be a lot of demagoguery on guns and things like that. And then I think you’ll see a lot of lofty rhetoric. I would say revisionist history and lofty rhetoric. . . . And I think he sees himself in that pantheon with progressives, and he's trying to say how great it is.”

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“And then he’ll basically say ‘look at what I’ve done, look at how much progress we’ve made, let’s keep going.’ My guess it is will be a speech like that.”

Fighting poverty in America: “Conservatives have so much to offer. I think conservatives, if we take our principles and tour and travel to poor communities and listen to people on the ground fighting poverty, you will find that if we apply our principles by respecting people, bringing government closer to people . . . we can make a huge difference. The War on Poverty—we're 50 years into it. It’s a stalemate because it’s a big-government, status quo problem. And our principles are more needed here, I would argue, than anywhere else in America. And so, I think we can, as the party of Reagan and Kemp, so that we have ideas that apply to everybody, solutions that help everyone . . . and reignite this idea of upward mobility.”

Providing an alternative agenda and replacing Obamacare: “We will put [a replacement] out there. We will show [people]—this is what we will replace it with. I really believe, fundamentally, that we’ve done a good job this year already . . . of showing where we are different and how we will oppose. Then we’ve got to kick into proposition mode. Being an alternative party and putting alternatives out there for things like Obamacare. And that’s something we will engage with our colleagues on, and the early parts of this year, to put out a plan to show what replacing Obamacare looks like for the country."

Celebrating the Packers victory: “I am doing great after last night. . . . It was nice to see Aaron Rodgers back to normal.”